At first glance, it seems like a relatively "lite" launch: similar to Facebook's timeline release, you get a big image above your head (comprised of a composite of your photos), seven randomly
selected recent images (sorry, no choice in the matter on this one), and a chronological display of your photos (like a Facebook timeline, you might even say).

But first glances are usually
short, blurry, and hard to describe. So let's take a second one.

Co-founder and CEO Kevin Systrom has pointed to "Big Data"-type visions, like "if you're in New York, knowing which stations have gas," and tracking where the highest concentration
of Instagramming is happening in any given moment. The corollary, then, of brand-driven engagement also exploding should not be hard to envision. Think geographically targeted special offers,
image-inspired contests, and viral friends-and-family photo-tagging campaigns. Scrupulous readers will note that Instagram is already facilitating major brand engagement.

But here is the
difference, and the reason why Instagram profiles are quite significant: most of a brand's Instagram-driven engagement today occurs on other platforms, like Twitter, Pinterest, and
Facebook (the last of which has promised Instagram users to keep their beloved service separate… ish).

Let's say you're Nike, for example. You want to engage your audience around an Instagram-enriched photo stream of your sponsored athletes, right as they are heading into game time. And you would
like to give away prizes to the users who create the most inspiring captions. With pre-profile Instagram, you can't. Why?

Because, in pre-profile Instagram, you can only
share individual photos with your existing subscribers. In other words, every image has its own, dedicated page. It is, in effect, siloed.

The only way to truly create
"brand engagement" using pre-profile Instagram is to share photos across your owned platforms, those that engender, well, the most engagement: Facebook (create a
“game-time” app that allows people to caption the photos), Twitter (assign the photo stream a hashtag), and Pinterest (create a board featuring the best-captioned photos).

The post-profile Instagram: Welcome to native brand engagement

In the future, of course, you'll still want to engage multiple platforms. Now, however, with the launch of
profiles, and with the assumption that Systrom’s ultimate vision far transcends the mere time-based and randomly selected photos that profiles currently display, the likelihood of native,
brand-driven Instagram engagement becomes very real. Instagram, in other words, becomes its own full-blown engagement platform -- one worthy of a robust strategy, with its own complexities
and necessary sensitivities to terms of service and nuanced rules of netiquette.

Everyone has “Pinterest strategies,” and “Twitter strategies,” and “Facebook
strategies” these days. Up until now, an “Instagram strategy” has usually consisted of choosing cool pictures to post to our owned channels. Friends, readers, colleagues: not any
longer.

The day Instagram made its investors happy

Instagram is evolving. Facebook’s investment in the service now represents roughly $715 million, and
it’s reasonable to assume that Mr. Zuckerberg will want to start making some of that money back in the not-too-distant future.

Considering that nearly all of Facebook's revenue comes
from advertising, and taking into account quotes
from Systrom like “We're obviously very excited by the adoption of Instagram by the world’s major brands and we'll continue to build products that suit both them and users
alike,” one need not be too radical of a visionary to portend that native, brand-sponsored Instagramming is not so far away.

Call it the Image Economy, the
Instagram Economy, the imagesphere -- whatever you want. Regardless of how
you describe it, however, it’s time to start getting ready to put one more strategic playbook in your social marketing mix.

Readers: what do you think? How close (or far away) are we to
a brand- and advertising-driven Instagram? And how can Systrom keep his users happy while taking steps toward turning his fully free service into a money-making, investment-returning business?

All content published by MediaPost is determined by our editors 100% in the interest of our readers ... independent of advertising, sponsorships or other considerations.

4 comments about "The Image Economy Cometh: Why Instagram's New Profile Pages Are A Big Deal".

Check this box to receive email notification when other comments are posted.

Ted Rubin from The Rubin Organization / Return on Relationship,
November 12, 2012 at 10:30 a.m.

I believe that Instagram is incredibly valuable as a relationship builder and as an indexer of social content. In addition... Instagram is hardly a Pinterest killer, but more of another form of incredibly valuable social engagement. Pinterest targets a much stronger across the board demographic right now (of women of course, but women "ARE" what social media is all about), and people go to Pinterest for inspiration and the click-thru's to e-commerce, especially for food, fashion and beauty related products are proof of the value. Instagram on the other hand is more about sharing, being social, and including other in your lives/activities. Is is more a Facebook experience, and why it was such a perfect fit, than a commerce related experience. Specifically why Google should pay whatever it takes to buy Pinterest asap.... totally relatable to their business model of driving commerce.

Excited to see the evolution of Instagram with the Profile Page launch and definitely believe brand driven profiles are only weeks, if not days, away.

Interesting perspective, Ted, and thanks for sharing. I agree that Instagram brand-driven profiles are both more like FB than Pinterest *and* very close. It'll be fascinating to see what an image-only brand environment looks like--how the restriction of photos-only, as opposed to the diversity of content that FB enables (and, arguably, encourages), will force or engender certain kinds of innovation in approaches to engagement. It'll also be interesting to see what kinds of functionality--geo-tagging, local commerce, gamification--Instagram chooses to roll out, and on what time horizon.

One thing is for sure: this is a fascinating time to be tracking this space.